Readers' Comments

Reader Comments on Aardvark Daily 29 August 2001
Note: the comments below are the unabridged submissions of readers and do
not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher.

From: Lindsay Williams
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Telecom Spam

Go go for it Bruce!

Let's give them the message loud and clear - we may have
lost the battle with our email but we don't want our phones
spammed. No way, no how. As you say, we end up with the
worst of both worlds - pay for the 'service' AND get ads!




From: Daniel
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Selling Content

Seeing as the "prepaid" model works so well, I think the
only way to sell content online is if websites have
agreements with ISPs whereby someone can view a page or
site for $x or x cents which will appear on their monthly
ISP bill. The ISP earns a commission and the content
provider gets their cut.

It would be so much easier for a user to click "Add to
Bill" rather than entering their credit card details
everytime for 20 cents or whatever.

The model would work, but of course, this is the Internet
and it would be a fairly big task to hook up ISPs and
websites, so maybe for now it's unrealistic, but as the
content providers become aggregated and people are spending
60% of their online time at 5 websites it just may be the
future.

After all, we pay for magazines, newspapers, Sky tv etc, so
paying for what we want online is not so ridiculous.

Of course on the other hand we also get tv and newspapers
free, supported by advertising. And the reason these
mediums work based on the ad revenue model is because the
ads are targeted. If only the online ad industry would wake
up and start targeting its advertising I think even the old
468x60 would work very well. Even when cpm's were quite
high the ads were ridiculously untargeted.

It's a vicious cycle, but there is potential, and I believe
in the next 12 months things will come back. Not to the way
they were two years ago, but to a more realistic level.




From: Peter Belt
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Telecom SPAM

When my phone is paged, my world normally crumbles.  In my universe it
means that something really bad has happened and I'm needed NOW.  The
blood pressure shoots up, the heart rate increases.  You walk to the phone
to see how bad it is this time...

...to find it is an unsolicited ad from Telecom.

Luckily my emergencies are just of the technical kind, but I'd hate to
have been a doctor who was enjoying a few moments of well deserved rest
thinking she had to rush back to work.

And the effect of the family is also not good.  They get to HATE that
sound coming from the phone because it means mummy / daddy is going to get
ripped away from the family again to return only when the problem is dealt
with.

How many emergency staff, fire, St Johns, midwives, etc were 'wound up' by
that stupid telecom greed?

TELECOM:  SOME OF US DON'T ''TEXT'' - WE NEED PAGING FOR EMERGENCIES AND
RESPOND ACCORDINGLY WHEN WE RECEIVE THEM.




From: Greg
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Telecom spam

Vodaphone do it too.  Consistently.




From: David Mill
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Vodafone "Spam" also

At least two times in the past week or so, I have received
a txt message from Vodafone, informing me of some stupid
new promotion or competition that they are running. As
nowadays I usually only get fairly important txt  messages
this has been fairly annoying to me. I know of no way to
opt out from these promotional txt messages from Vodafone.




From: Camryn Brown
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Important Vodafone Difference

Vodafone do send messages about their own services /
competitions... but they never send messages from third
parties like Telecom (apparently) does.

The latter is 100% unacceptable, the former is quite handy -
 I like to receive messages to let me know I have a week of
free texting or some such - and Vodafone knows it's
customer base is mostly young people (and generally not
people with serious jobs using SMS as a pager)

Be sure to give Telecom the message... don't want Vodafone
getting ideas + I may end up using Telecom's "serious"
network when I grow up ;-)
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